Describe what you do: I have served in a variety of capacities as an officer for the Wisconsin Army National Guard including Blackhawk Helicopter Pilot, Military Intelligence Officer, and Assistant Professor of Military Science for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. How will these skills help you win The Race? The obvious response would be the ability to cope and manage excessive stressors, and physical fitness due to the nature of the More...challenges. But persistence and attention to detail seem to be the attributes most essential for success.Three words to describe you: Motivated, resourceful and aggressive.Favorite hobbies: Socializing, boating, fitness and traveling. What famous person reminds you of yourself? Bill Clinton – we share a common affinity for music, politics, academics and socializing. What famous person reminds you of your teammate? Marilyn Monroe – being vivacious, beautiful and the center of attention. What is the accomplishment you are most proud of? Having graduated from undergraduate studies in three years while being a young father (unexpectedly), a full-time employee and serving in the National Guard. What scares you most about traveling? Being disoriented in an unfamiliar environment without knowing the language. What excites you most about traveling? Experiencing foreign cultures and “once-in-a-lifetime” experiences. Pet peeve about your teammate: Rachel is a persistent optimist which, for a realist can be annoying and overwhelming. What country and place would you most like to visit and why? Russia, due to the historical significance of the Cold War and prevalence of vodka! What do you hope to accomplish by running The Race (other than winning one million bucks)? Travel, communication and competition. Traveling to exotic locations while honing our communication skills and improving upon our relationship.

Describe what you do: I manage healthcare software implementations in hospitals and clinics. You probably grew up with paper charts and I am helping replace them, and other electronic medical records, with our software.How will these skills help you win The Race? I work with and manage many different people and personalities, and I have a “do what it takes” approach to work and life.Three words to describe you: Optimistic, driven and outgoing.Favorite hobbies: Dancing, traveling and intramural sports—volleyball, softball, kickball.What famous person reminds you of yourself? Ryan Seacrest—I know he’s a guy, but we both get along with everyone and we are very driven, hard-working people. What famous person reminds you of your teammate? JFK Jr. because he is smart, sexy, witty, likeable and politically savvy. What is the accomplishment you are most proud of? I’m proud of myself for always being up for trying anything. Life is short and I want to experience as much as I possibly can.What scares you most about traveling? Nothing scares me when I travel. I dread hotels without elevators when I’m packing heavy, though. What excites you most about traveling? I love to travel! I love experiencing different cultures…people, history, food, animals and shops.Biggest challenge you and your teammate will face on The Race together? Neither of us likes to be wrong and we are very competitive with each other. I would like to work on being a team and taking each other’s advice.Pet peeve about your teammate: He’s insanely anal…obsessive-compulsive anal. Things always have to be neat, clean and exactly how he wants them.What country and place would you most like to visit and why? Bora Bora, Tahiti—I’ve seen pictures and it looks amazing. I would love to stay in one of those huts in the ocean.What do you hope to accomplish by running The Race (other than winning one million bucks)? I hope to reconnect with Dave. Being away from my husband for a year, with a lack of regular communication and having nothing in common due to our environments was way more difficult than I ever thought it would be.

I sure hope not. But the big difference is that Ron and Kelly were only dating for a little bit, and Dave and Rachel are married. It even sounds like the have a kid. But that talk about about "reintegration". ....

Guard member, wife to compete in 'amazing race'By: The Associated Press | 01/29/12 5:01 AMThe Associated Press .A Wisconsin Army National Guard officer and his wife will compete in the latest installment of the CBS series "The Amazing Race."

Dave and Rachel Brown will be one of the 11 couples competing against each other in a trek around the world for $1 million. The show pits teams against physical and mental challenges.

Maj. Brown says 16 years of service in the Wisconsin guard and a recent deployment to Iraq should help him with the challenge. He's currently assigned to the ROTC detachment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rachel pitched the idea of applying for the show when the couple recently visited Sydney, Australia.

Maj. Brown has served as a military intelligence officer and a Black Hawk pilot. The 20th season of the reality show premieres Sunday, Feb. 19.

For some fans of CBS's "The Amazing Race," deciding which couple to cheer for may be a little easier when the 20th season of the hit series premieres Sunday, Feb. 19 - especially for Wisconsin citizens and patriotic viewers across the country.

Madison native Maj. Dave Brown, Jr., an officer in the Wisconsin Army National Guard, and his wife, Rachel, will be one of 11 couples competing against each other in a trek around the world for the ultimate prize of supreme bragging rights and one million dollars.

"Both Rachel and I have been avid fans of the show for quite some time," Dave said.

The reality show, which has garnered eight Emmy Awards, will pit the teams against many physical and mental challenges over the course of about 25 days.

Although viewers will have to "stay tuned" to see how the couple fairs in the show, Dave does credit his 16 years of service in the Wisconsin Army National Guard - including a recent year-long deployment to Iraq - for his preparation and execution throughout the challenge.

"I truly feel my involvement in the military best prepared me for a competition such as 'The Amazing Race,'" he said, "whether it be attention to detail, leadership style and abilities, or who I am as a person."

When asked how the Race equates to military training, Dave associated the two in three ways.

"It's as physically demanding as air assault school, as mentally draining and as academically involved as flight school, and as sleep depriving as SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) school," he said.

The major enlisted into the Arizona National Guard in 1996 as an artillery forward observer while attending Arizona State University. He graduated in three years with a bachelors in Political Science. He then transferred to the Wisconsin Guard's 32nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team in 2000 and earned an officer commission in 2002. Dave has also served as a military intelligence officer, a Black Hawk pilot with the 1st Battalion, 147th Aviation Regiment, and an executive officer for Recruiting and Retention Command. He is currently assigned to the ROTC detachment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an assistant professor of military science.

During his allotted two-week rest and relaxation leave from his deployment to Iraq, Dave visited with his wife in Sydney, Australia. Rachel took that opportunity to pitch the idea of applying for the show. They agreed, filled out the applications and she mailed them in as soon as she returned to their home in Madison.

Maj. Dave Brown, Jr., and his wife, Rachel, are set to compete in the CBS reality series "The Amazing Race" which premieres Feb. 19.

The cast of the CBS hit series "The Amazing Race" in its 20th season - which premieres Feb. 19. "Within a matter of a week or two, casting contacted her and requested a video," Dave said. A fellow Soldier took a one-minute video at the end of one of Dave's flying mission in Iraq. It wasn't the fanciest audition video, but it got the job done. Rachel compiled the video with one of her own and sent it in. Dave returned from deployment in June 2011. He and Rachel had interviews with CBS and the show began filming in the fall.

The rest of the story is yet to be seen.

Growing up, Dave was an avid wrestler and participated in basketball, football, baseball and track where he gained an appreciation for competing, something he shares today - along with his wife.

"I not only strive for victory, but I expect it for myself," Dave said. "I am competitive in all aspects of my life, whether it be personally or professionally. That's one aspect that interested both Rachel and I, both being competitive and people who are in constant pursuit of a challenge."

There wasn't much time to train for the competition. Dave added some weight, in the form of a ruck sack, to his normal physical training. As a couple, Dave and Rachel watched and discussed episodes and specific challenges like they'd done periodically on Sundays since they met.

"While viewing previous seasons we talked through specific challenges in more detail in consideration of our individual strengths and weaknesses," he said.

Whether Dave and Rachel are the first couple to arrive at the final checkpoint or not, it's sure to have been the adventure of a lifetime. And according to Dave, it also seems as if there was no lack of effort or motivation for them to compete.

"I truly felt that I was not only representing myself, my spouse and my son, but I was also cognizant of being a representative of the Wisconsin National Guard and the Army as a whole," Dave said. "The overwhelming pride of representing the men and women of the military in the best light possible ... that was definitely in the forefront of our minds."

It’s one thing to strategize from the comfort of your living room while watching hit reality show “The Amazing Race.” It’s quite another to be among the globe-trotting contestants.

Rachel and Dave Brown compete in the new season of "The Amazing Race" on CBS. (Photo: CBS)Major Dave Brown Jr., an assistant professor of military science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his wife, Rachel, will be among 11 couples competing on the 20th season of the show, which premieres at 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19 on CBS.

“The anonymity of a name like ‘Dave Brown’ is no longer,” says Brown.

Rachel, a UW-Madison graduate who works at Epic Systems in Verona, had the idea to be on the show. Both have been long-time fans and are adventurous by nature.

Dave, 33, had been deployed to Iraq but had a two-week rest and relaxation leave where he and Rachel, 30, met up in Australia. That’s when she pitched the idea. They filled out the application and crossed their fingers.

“I didn’t have the slightest idea,” Brown says about whether they’d be picked.

The show has won eight Emmy Awards and pits teams against many physical and mental challenges over the course of 25 days.

“I’m very happy that not only we had this opportunity but the opportunity to represent military members,” Dave says. “The overwhelming pride of representing the men and women of the military in the best possible light … that was definitely in the forefront of our minds.”

Dave, a West Salem, Wis., native, enlisted into the Arizona National Guard in 1996 as an artillery forward observer while attending Arizona State University.

He graduated in three years with a bachelor’s degree in political science, transferred into the Wisconsin Guard’s 32nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team in 2000 and earned an officer commission in 2002.

He’s also served as an intelligence officer, a Black Hawk pilot with the 1st Battalion, 147th Aviation Regiment and an executive officer for Recruiting and Retention Command. He is currently assigned to the ROTC detachment at UW as an assistant professor of military science.

“The icing on the cake is the travel – the challenge is the interaction and relationship between two people,” Dave says.

Being in the military has Dave and Rachel have had to do many things apart which made the experience of doing the show together all the more meaningful.

“The stress of not only military training but deployment really prepared me,” Dave says.

They can’t say whether they won the $1 million prize but are inviting people to watch the show with them at Madison’s, 119 King St. The party starts at 5:30 p.m.

They’ll have lots of people rooting them on.

“I was extremely excited for them to have such a tremendous opportunity to participate in this unique and challenging experience,” says Lt. Col. Jay Pitz, a professor of military science at the UW.

Pitz says Dave’s experience in the military will be a huge asset.

“As an Army officer, he has already experienced a multitude of challenges during his distinguished career,” Pitz says. “The leadership attributes that he has developed throughout a career of vast experiences as an Aviation officer and a combat veteran will have prepared him for the unique challenges that may be encountered during the program.”

Dave returned from deployment in June 2011. He and Rachel flew out to Los Angeles to audition but they didn’t find out until four weeks before taping began last fall that they’d been chosen.

“We were left in considerable suspense,” Dave says.

They were put through a rigorous process of testing.

“It’s as physically demanding as air assault school, as mentally draining and as academically involved as flight school and as sleep depriving as SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) School,” Dave says.

Dave and Rachel have had to be pretty secretive throughout the whole process. Mum is the only word about the outcome of the show.

Stay tuned to see how the Browns do. “The Amazing Race” airs at 7 p.m. Sundays on CBS.

Dave and Rachel Brown have never been shy about going after what they wanted. Dave recalls the night the Madison couple met at Wando’s, where his future wife took a forthright approach to getting his attention.

“She had the audacity, and the alcohol, to approach me and say I was hot, which I was astonished by,” Dave said.

That drive will likely serve them both well as contestants on CBS’ hit reality show “The Amazing Race,” which kicks off its 20th season at 7 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 19. The Browns are one of 11 pairs criss-crossing the globe completing challenges, with a $1 million prize awaiting the winning team.

But the Browns bring much more to the challenge than their chutzpah. Dave, 33, is a 16-year military veteran, a Blackhawk helicopter pilot who spent 12 years in the Wisconsin National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 147th Aviation Regiment. Shortly before returning home last summer and competing in “The Amazing Race,” he was on a tour of duty in Iraq as an intelligence officer for an aviation task force.

And Rachel, 30, works for Epic Systems, the Verona-based health care software company, in a position that requires her to travel every week or two. Anyone who watches the CBS show knows that being able to negotiate travel obstacles is a prized skill for a team.

Dave said he and Rachel were fans of the show before they met, and as a couple have spent many Sunday nights on the couch watching the show. But they watched it more intently than other couples.

“We would actually look at it from the vantage point of being competitors ourselves, identifying individual strengths and weaknesses that our team might possess, and how that might contribute to successes on the Race,” he said.

While her husband was deployed in Iraq, Rachel came across an announcement online seeking contestants for the series’ 20th competition. Over beers while on vacation together in Australia during one of Dave’s R&R breaks, they filled out the application together.

The thought was that, after a year apart, competing on the show would be a great way to reunite as a couple.

“Naively enough, I think both Rachel and I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to reconnect,” Dave said. “From Rachel and I’s vantage point, even just spending quality time with one another, or time in general, has been a challenge in and of itself. Rachel, working for Epic Systems, travels quite frequently if not every week for three or four days, certainly every other week. And I travel less frequently, but of course, for greater durations of time with deployments.

“We were just eager and excited for the opportunity to spend 30-plus days of time together.”

Dave and Rachel went into the Race thinking they would be serious contenders, and Dave stated confidently on a promotional video on the CBS website that he didn’t think any of the other teams could beat them. Only they could defeat themselves if they didn’t work optimally as a team, he added.

“Both Rachel and myself are hyper-competitive people,” he said. “I would say that for me, my tenancity, my resourcefulness, decisiveness and even common sense definitely contributed to my involvement on the race. From a military perspective — my attention to detail, mental and physical preparedness.”

He said he thought the different mindsets he and his wife brought to the Race made them a good team.

“Rachel definitely possesses a dramatically different mentality,” Dave said. “She is very much an optimist, whereas I am a realist. So we balance each other in that respect.”

Dave said that the greatest pressure he felt during the Race wasn’t necessarily getting from Point A to Point B first, or finishing the various challenges quickly. It was knowing that the couple, dubbed “Team Army” on the show, was standing in for so many military couples in America who have had to deal with deployments overseas.

“To represent the men and women of the armed forces, and from Rachel’s perspective, to represent the spouses left behind, was truly an honor and a privilege for us both,” Dave said. “The greatest stresser from my persepctive was not the race or the competition. It was the self-induced stress of performing optimally on behalf of our military. It’s really an underrepresented profession in reality TV.”

Now, the stress of the competition is over, although Dave and Rachel are forbidden to talk about what happens on the show before it airs. They’ll be down at Madison’s on King Street on Sunday night, watching it unfold the same as every other “Amazing Race” fan.

“In some respects, being a military intelligence officer and having been in possession of some classified type information, retaining information is second nature,” Dave said. “But something that you’re truly excited about — being on the show — it has been difficult to harness.”

Last summer in Los Angeles, Madison residents Dave and Rachel Brown were subjected to a number of psychological and physical screenings and exams, one of which was the famous IQ — intelligence quotient — test.

Neither Dave, 33, nor his wife, Rachel, 30, had ever taken an IQ test. But they hoped to be chosen as contestants on the hit CBS show, "The Amazing Race," and the tests were part of the deal.

After the IQ test, Rachel asked for the results.

The examiner said, "Are you sure you want to know?"

"When I heard that," Dave said recently, "I knew I wanted to know."

No doubt that kind of competitiveness and feisty good humor is part of why the Browns ultimately were selected to be contestants on "Race," the eight-time Emmy Award-winning reality show that begins its 20th season Sunday night on CBS.

It also probably didn't hurt that they look like movie stars.

Of course, they aren't film idols. Dave, originally from the La Crosse area, is with the Wisconsin Army National Guard, having served in a number of capacities including as a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, military intelligence officer, and currently as assistant professor of military science with the ROTC detachment at UW-Madison.

Rachel, who grew up near the Twin Cities and came to Madison to attend UW, is a project manager for Epic in Verona. She was traveling last week and not able to participate in my interview with Dave, which had to be conducted over the phone so a CBS representative could listen in.

The network appears to live in mortal fear that a contestant on the show will slip and reveal a location or result from the new season — which was shot in the fall — before it airs. Eleven couples are in the competition that takes them around the world in about 25 days and brings a prize of $1 million to the winners.

CBS didn't have to worry about Dave Brown, who was smooth as could be — friendly and funny — during our chat.

After growing up near La Crosse, Brown moved with his mother to Phoenix, where he attended high school and then Arizona State University. He enrolled in the Arizona National Guard in 1996, transferring to the Wisconsin Guard, and Madison, in 2000.

Dave said he and Rachel met in Wando's on University Avenue in 2006. They married in August 2009. Both were fans of "Amazing Race" before they met.

"Then as a couple we watched more intently," he said.

Like a lot of viewers, they speculated what it might be like to be contestants.

But they never acted on it until Dave was sent to Iraq in 2010. The forced separation — abetted by a general lack of communication technology from Iraq and the secrecy requirements of Dave's work with military intelligence — took a toll.

Dave and Rachel were able to reunite in Australia in February 2011 when Dave got two weeks' rest and relaxation from Iraq. Just before that, Rachel sent Dave a note saying a fun way for them to reconnect might be to apply for "Amazing Race."

Dave wasn't sure she was serious, but once they were in Sydney, Rachel pulled out a thick sheaf of papers that turned out to be the application. In between surfing lessons and romantic dinners, they filled it out.

Rachel mailed the application from Madison and before long, word arrived that the "Race" casting department was interested enough to want a video of the couple. Dave, however, was back in Iraq. He got his flight crew chief to tape him with their plane in the background.

Dave's overseas deployment ended in June, and not long after, he and Rachel were flown to California with other potential contestants for interviews with the "Race" host and creators as well as testing to predict how well they might handle the show's physical and mental challenges.

Clearly, they tested well. Dave and Rachel plan to watch Sunday night's first episode at Madison's on King Street, where they will host an informal party for anyone who wants to share in the fun, starting at 5:30.

And what of that IQ test?

"Apparently I beat her by two points," Dave said.

I suspect Rachel might suggest that's well within the margin of error.